


you can call me by the name I gave you

by alaynestones



Series: the rest is confetti [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Grief, Infidelity, Lyanna is Not a Stark, Pining, Roommates, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:33:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25483219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alaynestones/pseuds/alaynestones
Summary: “I know you know.” Catelyn wipes her eyes, and her laugh is wet. “I’m just being silly. Jon will take care of you.”Hearing his name for the hundredth time isn’t any easier than hearing it for the first. It’s like poking a wiggling tooth with your tongue. It hurts, but you can’t stop doing it. It hurts, but you like it.Sansa forces a glib sort of smile, “Doesn’t he always?”
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Series: the rest is confetti [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1854727
Comments: 47
Kudos: 369





	you can call me by the name I gave you

**Author's Note:**

> This is half based off the short story Mr. Salary by Sally Rooney and Mark Sloan and Lexie Grey’s relationship in Grey’s Anatomy. Enjoy.
> 
> [title from bags by clairo]

Sansa is leaving the hospital today. Her mother fills out the discharge paperwork, and packs her two suitcases full of clothes from her apartment and a duffel bag with all of her toiletries. The nurses help her shower, and Catelyn brushes her hair, just like she used to when she was younger. But Sansa brushes her own teeth, until her gums bleed, just to feel something.

“Excited?” Dr. Cassel asks. He’s a nice doctor. A young one, too. He's the reason she’s alive right now. He’s to blame. 

“Extremely.” She lies. She is very good at lying. She smiles too, because she knows it’ll make him feel better. She is also very good at knowing what men want.

Her mother is excited in the definition that she is anxious. She keeps fluttering around the room, fussing nervously over small things. She talks, all the while. Smalltalk has always soothed her.

“It’ll only be for a month, or so.” Catelyn repeats for the umpteenth time that hour. “Then you can come home.”

Sansa nods mutely. She does a lot of things mutely. These days, she doesn’t have much to say. 

“We’ll visit you every weekend. It’s not too far. If we leave early, the drive won’t be bad. And we could stay in a hotel nearby and drive back in the morning. After we have breakfast together, of course. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

She nods again.

Catelyn stops moving, then. She has finally finished refolding everything in both suitcases. She looks up. Her blue eyes shine with tears. “I wish I could come with you.”

Sansa feels something break open inside of her chest. It startles her, because she’s been numb for so long. She whispers, “I know, Mom.”

And yet, she’s glad that she can’t. Not for lack of love, but because she feared if her mother stayed with her while she was like this, that love would cease to exist. Loving broken people is horribly exhausting. And Starks don’t break. 

“I know you know.” Catelyn wipes her eyes, and her laugh is wet. “I’m just being silly. Jon will take care of you.”

Hearing his name for the hundredth time isn’t any easier than hearing it for the first. It’s like poking a wiggling tooth with your tongue. It hurts, but you can’t stop doing it. It hurts, but you like it.

Sansa forces a glib sort of smile, “Doesn’t he always?”

* * *

Sansa receives many visitors, since it would be the last time anyone saw her for a while. Robb and Jeyne bring the girls by, and they give her a homemade get well soon card with lots of glitter and mermaid stickers that she yearns to hang on her fridge at home. Arianne and Benjen stop by before their flight. It’s a quick visit, but it’s her favorite because they are her favorites.

Sansa drops her head on Arianne’s shoulder. “Take me with you.”

“You don’t mean that.” Arianne smoothes her hair back.

“You could put me in your suitcase.”

Benjen laughs. “Your mother would kill us.”

His kisses are whiskery and scratchy against her forehead. Arianne’s hands are warm and soft in her own. It’s been so long since she last saw them. She wishes this wasn’t the occasion that brought them together.

“Look at it this way.” Benjen nudges her. “It’ll be just like old times.” 

Sansa remembers old times. She remembers early breakfasts and late dinners and the beep of a hospital pager and Friday movie nights and Saturdays spent having afternoon tea with Arianne and Benjen when they came into the city. She remembers getting reprimanded for using all of the hot water and meeting for lunch during classes and waking up on the couch with a blanket covering her. She remembers old times and she misses them. She misses _him._ She does not want to. 

“There’s a reason why those times are _old._ ” 

Arianne sighs, squeezing her hand, eyes warm and sad. “You really are his heart, you know.”

She made a habit of saying things like that. Benjen made a habit of pretending not to hear them. Sansa made a habit of doing the same. This is what she does now, closing her eyes. 24 years old is far too old for pretty placating lies.

Spring semester is starting back up, so Arya and Bran couldn’t stay. She went back to New York and he went back to California days ago. Only Rickon is still on break, and he’s spent most of it at home, babysitting their senile grandfather while Catelyn babysits her. But he did come by yesterday, and gave her a bouquet of petunias and a stuffed wolf he christened Shaggydog. She doesn’t put it in her bags, but keeps him with her.

Edric comes to see her before his afternoon classes with a vase full of tulips and a look of concern that makes her feel even more guilty than she already does. 

Their foreheads touch. He says, “Why do you have to go so far away?”

She had asked the same question a few days ago. Castle Black is 5 hours away from home, and with bad roads, it might as well be a world away. But Melisandre Asshai is the best physical therapist in the country, and she lives in Castle Black. And until Sansa gets better, so would she. 

She caresses the side of his face. It is all she can give him. “I won’t be gone long. You won’t even miss me.”

Edric covers her hand with his. “I miss you already.”

There are times like this, when he says the most perfect things, and she wishes that it was him. That it was him who she loved and ached for. That it was him who she belonged to. Edric is perfect. He sleeps in with her on lazy weekend afternoons. He likes to hold her hand. He lets her pick the music while they’re in the car. And most importantly—he loves her. Maybe if they had met at a different time, or if he got to her first—it could have been Edric. 

But it isn’t.

Telling him that was one of the hardest things she ever had to do in her life. Their break up was gentle, and amicable, and that made it hurt even more. He held her as she cried. 

“I’ll miss you too.” Sansa leans against him.

The door opens.

He’s always had impeccable timing. He enters the room abruptly, like a nasty hiccup. The collar of his winter coat is turned up slightly. A dark curl falls into his eyes. His hair is shorter than it was when they lived together, and has silver in some places. Vain enough to cut it but not vain enough to dye it. That’s Jon.

“Ready?” He asks her. 

He doesn’t look at Edric when he poses the question. He hasn’t looked at Edric at all. She doesn’t think they’ve even introduced themselves to each other properly. But she knows from the way Jon’s voice toes the line of deceptively bland and impolitely cool, and the way Edric’s hand tightens on her arm, that they never would. 

Sansa nods.

“I should get back to class.” Edric kisses her cheek. “Will you text me when you get there?”

She sighs. “If I don’t, you’ll just worry.”

Edric smiles at that. “As long as you know.” 

He leaves after that. Jon shuts the door behind him. He gets down on his knees in front of her, untying the laces of her boots, so he can double knot them. His fingers work quickly, deftly. His voice is hard and accusing. 

“You don’t even like tulips.”

He’s right. But he’s right because he knows her. Because she has given him the privilege of knowing her, and every time she brings someone around, he likes to throw it back in her face. Sansa doesn’t say a word.

“He’s not allowed in my house.”

A pleasant shiver runs down her spine. She represses it, crossing her arms over her chest. “Thought it was Benjen’s house.”

He looks up at her, irritatingly triumphant. “She speaks.”

She hasn’t said a word to him since their last conversation, when they discussed the plan to go to Castle Black. It was two days after she woke up. It took him two whole days to come see her. She knows this because Arianne told her where he was, every time she asked. (“You know, around.”) or (“He’s talking to the doctors.”) or (“I’m sure he’ll be here soon.”) 

She waited for him. It felt like she was always waiting for him. 

Jon scratches his jaw. The flickering, fluorescent lighting reflects against the silver band on his finger. The sight of it never fails to make her chest feel like it’s been caved in.

“It would help if I knew what I was being punished for.” 

Sansa thinks about it. What could she punish him for really? For rejecting her? For moving on? No. That’d make her an asshole. For going out of his way to make sure she had the best care possible? For rearranging things in his home life on account of her? No. That’d make her ungrateful. But him, barging his way back into her life after such a long absence, taking control of her heart like he had never broken it in the first place, what does that make him?

She decides to say nothing at all.

“You can hate me all you want. I’d rather you get better and hate me than anything else.” Their eyes meet, and his voice softens. “Is that so terrible of me?”

Sansa has difficulty talking around the lump in her throat. “I guess not.”

He seems relieved at her words, as he stands up. “Eight words in total. That’s an improvement.”

Of course he’s counting. This is a competition. Everything to him is a competition. She rolls her eyes. “I didn’t know you liked the sound of my voice so much.”

“I like everything about you.” Jon says.

He extends his hand, and after a brief pause, she takes it, and allows him to help her into the wheelchair. He pushes her smoothly. In the elevator, she leans back. Her head falls against his abdomen. He runs a hand through her hair.

There are times like this, when she’s with him, and she knows exactly why it isn’t Edric.

* * *

Sansa has known Jon Snow practically her entire life.

Arianne is his older cousin, and she married Benjen when Sansa was three years old. She was the flower girl. Jon was there, too. One of Benjen’s groomsmen. In the wedding photo that is most widely circulated throughout their family, they can be seen on opposite sides of the picture: Sansa with her basket of flowers, and Jon beside Robb. He was at her christening, too. But that was when Benjen and Arianne were just dating.

She didn’t know him, not really, until she moved in with him. They lived in two different countries. That came back to help her later when she got an academic scholarship to Eyrie College in London. Her mother said it was too far from home. But Arianne stepped in. Her and Benjen lived just outside of London, but that wasn’t close enough for Catelyn.

“Jon lives in the city. He could look after her on the weekdays and me and Ben could take the weekends.” Arianne assured her. “It’ll be no trouble.”

It wasn’t. 

The suggestion to move in to avoid dorm expenses came later, also proctored by Arianne, after her mother tried to back out of the idea, pleading lack of financial feasibility. Sansa couldn’t figure out why at the time, but Jon did anything Arianne asked of him. He let her move in with little more than a shrug. Sansa exchanged brief, perfunctory emails with him the week leading up to the event. When her flight got in, he picked her up on time, and rolled her luggage to his car. He opened her door for her. She realized with a start that they were the same height. He looked nothing like she remembered, but she didn’t remember much.

In the first week, she thought he didn’t like her. It bothered her, as she had never had anyone really dislike her before. He never attempted to make conversation and when he did, it was rather abrupt. He was barely home, and when he was, he was in his room. She asked Arianne if she had done something wrong.

“He’s just a bit shy.” Arianne laughs, waving her off. “Don’t tell him I said this, but he’s like a grumpy little turtle. Just give him a few jabs, and he’ll poke his head out of his shell eventually.”

So that was what she did. She had to start off slow, because as much as he was like a turtle, he was like a deer—easily spooked. When he cooked meals for them, she helped him with dishes after. She brewed him a pot of coffee every morning, and they ate breakfast together in stilted silence. She asked him for help with her history essays; he was an expert on all things medieval. When he was watching television, she sat on the other end of the couch with her assigned reading. And he came around.

He started asking her what she wanted for dinner rather than telling her what they were gonna have. He bought her tea and hot chocolate, because he knew she wasn’t fond of coffee. He started expanding on his day at the hospital when she asked, and he asked her about school—but her answers never varied much. Sansa didn’t know anyone after she moved to the city, and she wasn’t anxious to get attached—fearing anyone could smell tragedy on her from a mile away. Jon wasn’t like that, as he was a bit tragic himself. He never asked her about the accident, and never looked at her with pity, and she liked that more than anything else. Being around him was very easy, so that was what she did. 

“It’s friday night.” Jon said to her three months into their living arrangement, as they sat on the couch, watching the BBC miniseries of pride and prejudice. She could see his chest hair underneath his scrubs. That very same night, Sansa discovered she had a morbid fascination with it. “You’re 19. You should be out drinking and partying. I swear, you’re like a little old woman.”

“And you _are_ old.” Sansa shot back, pushing her foot into his side. He caught it, and set it in his lap. “So there.”

Of course, she did make friends eventually, with Myranda and Mya from her lit class. Even though they were dating, she never felt like the third wheel. And even though they were very much gay, they adored Jon. He was the perfect man in their eyes, since he didn’t talk much. They also took to giving Sansa looks whenever he came into the room.

“They don’t understand our relationship.” She sighed drunkenly one night.

“They don’t?” Jon sounded very amused. She could not tell if he was actually amused, because his face was upside down. Her head was in his lap.

She shook her head and regretted it. The world started spinning. “They can’t understand why you’re so nice to me if you’re not getting anything out of it.”

“Am I overly nice to you?”

“You do my _laundry_.”

“That’s because when _you_ did our laundry I ended up with a pink shirt.”

“I said I was sorry!” Sansa covered her face with her hands. 

He laughed. She found that she liked his laugh. She thought about telling him this, but then she forgot. 

“You do dishes sometimes.” Jon offered. “Does that count as a benefit?”

“Not the kind of benefit they’re talking about.” 

He didn’t say anything. She thought maybe she ruined things by making him uncomfortable. She rushed to correct her mistake. 

“It’s because you’re older, I think. That’s where the sordidness comes in. But you’re the same age as Robb. So it’s not really that weird when you think about it.”

Jon grunted thoughtfully. He did that a lot. “So that makes me like your brother, then?”

And her first, immediate, kneejerk response was no. 

Because she daydreamed about his chest hair for Christ’s sake and she ate shitty hospital cafeteria food just so they could have lunch together between her classes and she held her breath every time he mentioned a female coworker and she watched aortic aneurysm surgeries just so she could sit beside him on the couch—

She wouldn’t do any of those things for Robb, and she realized that was the problem. 

“I don’t think you’re anything like anyone.” Sansa admitted quietly. 

* * *

Her goodbyes to her mother are blissfully short—she has to go home and relieve Tansy of her nursing duties. Her car leaves the parking lot before theirs. Sansa watches it go, relieved.

Jon helps her into the car. He leans over her to buckle her seatbelt, since her right arm is in a sling. The chain of his necklace, partially hidden underneath his sweater, dangles in her face.

“Since when do you wear jewelry?” She asks him, when he starts the car. 

Jon tucks his necklace under his sweater even further. “Am I not allowed?”

He answers rather defensively. She supposes that’s what she gets for trying to make an effort. She doesn’t say anything else. 

Sansa listens to music until she drains her phone battery, then she has nothing left to do but stare out the window. She focuses on the sky rather than the road. Big, fluffy, overcast clouds cover everything. One of them looks like a heart. She pictures replacing the hummingbird-like, weak thing in her chest with it. People with cloud hearts had no reason to be scared.

“What are you thinking about?” Jon asks.

“You.”

It isn’t a lie, not really. He is a part of her, so in some way, he is always on her mind, sitting inside her brain, malignant. But she doesn’t say it because it’s true. She says it because she feels like being cruel. Because she wants to see him hurting for a change.

His ears turn red, the desired effect. “You always look to the left before you lie.”

She says it without thinking. “Stop.” 

“Stop what?”

“Stop _that._ Stop knowing me. Just stop.”

Her voice quavers. Sansa feels like crying. She doesn’t know why. 

Jon sighs. She hates this sigh. It is his _I’m hurting just as much as you are_ sigh.

His voice is very quiet. “God knows I’ve tried.”

His phone rings, then. The caller ID shows up on the touchscreen of the radio. _Val._ She feels ice drench her veins. It doesn’t go away when she watches him press decline.

“You should answer that.” 

“I don’t want to.” 

She shouldn’t ask, but she needs to know. Needs the answer just as sure as she needs him. “Why?”

He cuts a look toward her. “Don’t.”

It isn’t a request, but a demand. There are times like this when he is unfair, and uses the control he has over her to his advantage. He doesn’t do it very often, but he doesn’t have to. Both of them know just as well who she belongs to, although he pretends not to sometimes. 

“Why can’t—” Jon closes his eyes. “Why can’t we just be normal? Why can’t we just be us again?”

_Because we aren’t normal._ A normal man would be at home with their wives instead of in a different country caring for another woman. A normal man would just fuck her and be done with it. A normal man would be able to see the train wreck she is, and just abandon her. But he won’t, because he isn’t normal.

And neither is she. A normal woman would marry a man like Edric, and move on. A normal woman wouldn’t rather be dead than alive. A normal woman wouldn’t let him stop this car right now, and lie her on the ground, so he could do whatever he wanted to her.

_This isn’t normal._ Sansa thinks to herself. _This isn’t how normal people live._

* * *

It does not take long for the nightmares to come back. 

Without the morphine, she’s back on the road again. Not the one that put her in the hospital in the first place but the one from years back. Everything is dark. The car is upside down. Glass is still crunching. Someone is screaming. It’s her. She’s screaming and her dad is dead. 

  
His neck is bent all wrong. Jeyne is bleeding out in the backseat, breathing shallowly. Sansa is begging her to stay, begging her to hold on, and she’s screaming for help, trapped underneath her twisted seatbelt—and it’s all her fault.

She’s in another car. Distantly, she’s aware of the differences. The fact that it’s daylight. The car is parked. It’s not upside down. Still, Panic is clawing at her throat. Her chest is tightening. The door is opening—

“Hey.” Jon is saying, as he’s unbuckling her seatbelt, and she’s pulling at it frantically. _“Hey._ You’re safe. Sansa—You’re safe.”

The seat belt buckle clangs against the console as she launches herself into his arms. He catches her, still muttering reassurances into her ear. She feels her breathing start to slow, and her vision starts to blur, and now she’s crying. Just full blown, body wracking sobs that hurt her entire body. The tears fall and they don’t stop. 

“You still have them?” Jon asks, when her cries slow into heavy, ragged breathing. His chin is on top of her head. Her face is buried in his coat.

“Yes.” Her throat hurts, like she’s been swallowing shards of glass and she doesn’t sound much better. “I’m sorry.”

He never had to see her like this. Just after, when he came home from late shifts to find her curled up on the sofa, too afraid to go to bed. She tried her best not to bother him. But he always knew, somehow.

“Don’t be sorry.” He runs his fingers through her hair. “Don’t ever be sorry, _mo chridhe._ Shhhh…”

The longer he holds her, the more a drugging sense of calm sinks into her bones. She feels hazy, almost. Everything else is background noise except for his voice. This is what she wants. To stay here forever. To stay in his arms forever.

But his phone rings, and she knows who it is. 

So does Jon. He pulls away from her, but he doesn’t check his phone, just silences it. His eyes search hers. “Are you okay to keep going?”

Sansa looks at their surroundings. A gas station—mostly empty. No one had seen her breakdown. She nods. She had derailed them long enough. 

“We’re almost there. Won’t be long.” His hand cups her cheek, rough skin rasping against her chin. “We’ll make it before dark, I think. Okay?”

She nods, and he kisses her forehead. She feels a bit stronger. 

* * *

Castle Black is a ghost town with a population fewer than a thousand. The few citizens that mill the streets walk around like zombies, waddling from the layers of coats they wear. The signs on storefronts are old and faded. The stoplights are decrepit and eerie looking in the twilight. Sansa wonders why a physical therapist would want to set up a practice out here.

The cottage is 20 minutes outside of town, far enough away to make her breathe a little easier, up in the mountains. It is somehow both quintessentially Benjen and Arianne. The dark color of the house doesn’t take away from the overall cheeriness of the flowery bushes and the gray picket fence that lines the wrap around porch. The deck chairs are covered in frost, so is the trembling clothesline. It’s pretty, but lonely. 

“There’s nobody for miles.” Her voice is hoarse from lack of use. She clears her throat. “You could kill me and they wouldn’t find the body until spring.”

Jon looks amused at that. “You should be probably nice to me, then.”

He gets out of the car first. In the rearview mirror, Sansa watches him pop the trunk. She cracks her door open. 

“I can walk if you get me the crutches.”

“There’s ice.” He grunts, pulling the wheelchair out of the trunk and unfolding it. It’s not the one from the hospital. It’s rented. “I’m not taking that chance.”

Begrudgingly, she sits in the wheelchair. She braces herself for the uncomfortable transition from the ground to the porch, but he lifts her with ease. Jon works out excessively. He doesn’t do well with being idle, so he is very athletic in his spare time. Anyone who came to know him would find that he’s actually a very restless person, despite appearances.

He unlocks the door, and rolls her inside. There’s a few moments where she’s alone in the house as she waits for him to bring their bags inside. It’s dark and freezing. Sansa can see her own breath. She rubs her gloved hands on her cheeks, and ultimately decides to move in order to keep warm. 

She wheels herself around. There’s an olive green sofa with a matching loveseat and automan, which is covered in a cozy looking quilt. The window seat is lovely, with a perfect view of the outside. Instead of a TV, there’s a spacious fireplace. And a bookshelf. She moves onto the kitchen, which is just big enough for two people. The cabinets are dove gray, and there’s a french door leading to the porch. There’s a nice sized dining area with a sturdy wooden table. The flowers at the center are long since dead. 

Sansa makes her way to the bedroom. She notices immediately there’s only one bed, and it takes up most of the room. Another window seat. Yellow, this time. Like sunshine. There’s a desk, with a rolling chair. The bathroom inside has a shower and a tub separately. The hallway bathroom only has a tub. 

“You moved.”

Jon is at the door, glaring at her in disapproval. He’s not wearing his jacket anymore, just his black cable knit sweater, rolled up at the forearms. 

“There’s only one bed. Did you know that?”

“The couch is a pullout. That’s where I’ll sleep.”

He seems unconcerned, or maybe he’s just forcing it. She doesn’t know. 

“I’m gonna start a fire.” Jon sets her suitcase in her room, and gives her a stern look. “No more adventuring, you.”

_“No more adventuring,”_ Sansa mimics under her breath, rolling her eyes.

He turns back. “What’d you say?”

She affects an innocent smile. “Nothing.”

He doesn’t look convinced in the slightest, but at the very least, he’s amused. He closes the door. 

Sansa manages to feebly hop the tiny distance from her chair to the bed. She sighs against the pillows. Everything smells like cinnamon and laundry detergent. She feels like she’s laying on a cloud. She can even ignore her back brace digging into her waist and her bulky leg cast. She closes her eyes and lays there for awhile.

“You like it?”

She opens them sometime later to find Jon leaning up against the doorframe watching her. “It’s wonderful.” 

“Arianne thought you’d like it. You’ll have to tell her.”

Sansa nods, spreading her arms and legs out like a starfish. Even then, the bed is still too big. She rolls over on her side to look at him looking back at her. The silence is heavy. Not uncomfortable. Too comfortable, in fact. Too tender. She knows he’d come to bed if she asked, like he had so many times before.

Jon scratches the back of his neck, averting his eyes. “Not much food in the house. I’m gonna need to head to the market. Get us some things.”

She turns away too. “Okay.” 

“Will you be alright here?”

“Yeah.”

Silence stretches once more. He breaks it. 

  
“Promise?”

There are moments like this where Sansa thinks they share a soul. He wasn’t there that night. He didn’t see what happened. But still, some part of him knew. Some part of him suspects at the very least. She’s simultaneously ashamed and relieved. He is the last person she wants to lie to.

She swallows thickly, “Promise.” 

* * *

The rolling desk chair turns out to be very useful. 

Sansa uses it like a scooter to get around. She plugs in her phone for charging and calls her mother and texts Edric. She checks her emails with her data—no wifi. But Petyr approved her for her time off and told her to take as long as she needed to get better, and of course, to say hello to her mother for him. She unpacks her things. She showers. It feels good to smell like herself again. The last feat drains her of every last drop of energy. By the time she’s finished, her back is on fire and she has a cramp in her only leg that works from trying to scoot her way places. She decides to sit in the window seat, and wait for Jon to come home. Not even ten minutes later, he’s pulling in.

It takes him a couple trips to bring all the groceries inside. Only when they’re all inside the kitchen does he notice her sitting by the window, with wet hair, and different clothes.

“I left you alone for an hour, max.” Jon says, exasperated. 

“I didn’t do anything bad.” 

“You showered without help.”

“I just wanted to feel like myself again!”

“Do you normally not wear pants?” His neck is flushed. 

Sansa pouts. “I was too tired to put them on.”

He looks at her legs, and rubs his face with a groan. He’s muttering curses under his breath, He disappears into the kitchen. She hears him angrily unpacking things, and gives him a second, before sitting back in the chair and rolling her way to the kitchen. Jon is opening a bottle of beer. 

“This is what you’ve been doing, then?” He glares at her. “Scooting about? Being naughty?”

Something low stirs in her stomach at the word. At _him_ using that word. “Being resourceful isn’t the same as being naughty.” 

“And prancing around in your knickers? Which category does that fall under?” 

“I’m hardly _prancing._ My leg is broken.”

“If you don’t start acting like it, I’m gonna need more of this before the night is over.” He takes a swig. She watches him swallow. He looks incredibly ordinary in this kitchen. Like he belongs. Sleeves rolled up. Drinking. Rifling through groceries. At least for a little while, she can pretend he belongs to her. 

Sansa leans against his side. Sitting down, she comes up to just his abdomen. “What’s for dinner?”

“Stew.”

“ _Fancy_.”

His fingers find the end of her damp, curling braid. “It’ll warm you up nice.”

She holds a hand out for his bottle. Jon looks at her like she’s made a funny joke. 

“I can’t have some?”

“You don’t even like ale.”

Sansa shrugs. She didn’t but she still wanted some. “Then why did you get it?”

He smirks. “Because you’re not supposed to be drinking with your medication.”

She scowls, watching him move around the kitchen. She decides to drink a glass of water instead. Jon objects to that, but he’s too busy seasoning the meat to pour it for her. It pisses him off sufficiently, and he’s adding chunks of beef to the large pot with a mutinous glare. It puts her in a much better mood. 

“Do you need help?” Sansa asks innocently, scooting over to his side. 

His eyes snap towards hers. “If you scoot somewhere _one_ more time, I’ll tie you to the bed until your appointment tomorrow.”

She feels hot all over, from her cheeks to the tips of her toes. “I don’t have to move. I can chop vegetables right here.”

Jon sighs, and washes his hands. Then he hands her a bundle of freshly washed carrots. “You can do these.”

She does as she’s bid, using a cutting board and a knife from the drawer next to her. 

“Smaller.” He warns her. “If you choke, your family will never forgive me.”

Sansa splits the choppy, thick cylinders in half. 

“Very good.”

The need that opens up in her chest at his words feels a lot like hunger, with the way it jerks at her gut and slickens her hands with sweat. She slides the carrots over to him. 

“You should have told me there wasn’t gonna be any wifi.” She tries to modulate her voice. “Or TV. Or anything fun.”

“We’re living in nature. Nature is fun.”

“I feel like a dinosaur.” 

Sansa spins, careful not to scoot. The living room is in view. Her love for him is so overwhelming that it gets hard to be around him at all. She needs a break, sometimes. A distraction. 

“Is that a record player?”

Jon looks over his shoulder, and squints. “Looks like it.”

She stretches her fingers out and wiggles them. “Can you push me over there?”

He sighs, but pauses his cooking to do so without complaint. The record player is sitting on top of a shelf that holds a collection of vinyls. Sansa decides to thumb through them curiously. The Beatles. That’s definitely Benjen. Al Greene. That’s all Arianne. It’s interesting to look through their collection and sort the records accordingly. There was no way her aunt was listening to the Beach Boys and there was no way her uncle was listening to the Dixie Chicks.

“That’s better.” She makes a sound of satisfaction, as music plays from the speakers after she spends ten minutes fiddling with the machine. 

“You weren’t even alive when this song came out.” Jon points out. 

She couldn’t call who the Fleetwood Mac vinyl belonged to, but Robb owned the Rumors CD, and every time he’d drive her somewhere, Stevie and Lindsey would be singing in her ear. Sansa liked it so much, she went with Robb to run the simplest if it meant she could hear Silver Springs.

“I decided to put on something you could appreciate.” She teases.

That earns her a laugh. She really loves his laugh. “I wasn’t alive, either.”

“And here I thought you were this ancient omniscient being.”

“Come taste this, instead of running your mouth.”

He doesn’t let her, of course, but comes to her. He’s holding a wooden spoon with his hand hovering underneath. She sips. She’s not sure if the warmth spreading to her fingertips and toes is from the stew, or doing exactly what he tells her. 

Sansa licks her lips. “Good.”

Jon tastes it next. His mouth covers the exact space hers had. His nose scrunches like it always does when he’s contemplating something. 

“More salt.” He says at last, heading back to the stove. 

“Maybe if you didn’t smoke so much you’d still have taste buds.” 

“Don’t start.”

Dinner is ready for consumption 20 minutes later. They eat at the table in a comfortable silence. Or rather, Jon eats, and Sansa watches him while she eats. He’s always eaten funny. Like he’s doing it to get it over with and not because he takes any pleasure in it. He’d inhale anything in front of him. 

“Time for your meds.” He says, after rinsing their bowls properly. He shakes them out into her palm. She washes them down with water rather sullenly. 

“Yum.” She says flatly.

What happens next is slow, and careful. Jon wraps an arm underneath her knees and her upper back rather than her lower, and cradles her to his chest with little more than a sigh. Sansa yelps in surprise. 

“I’m more than capable of getting myself to bed.” Her voice is extremely high and squeaky in her ears. “I have legs.”

“You have one leg.” He corrects her, pushing the bedroom door open with his foot. “And if you use it to scoot one more place tonight, I’ll tie you to the bed. Then you’ll have no legs.”

She honestly wouldn’t mind that as much as he thought she would, but she couldn’t let him know that. So instead, she surrenders quietly, and she allows him to place her in bed. Sansa hides her warm cheeks under the duvet.

“Your appointment isn’t until noon tomorrow.” Jon stuffs his hands in his pockets. “So you can sleep in, if you’d like.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.” He nods at her, and turns to leave.

She stops him, voice hesitant. “Will you leave the door open?”

His face, it just goes soft. Like the way it usually does around her. Only for her. That’s one part of him she has. “If that’s what you want.” 

He cracks the door when he leaves. Through that sliver of space, she can see him, making his bed on the couch.

Sansa knows she won’t have any nightmares tonight.

* * *

She wakes up to a loud, consistent, thud that causes her eyes to flutter open. She yawns into her pillow, and shifts onto her side very slowly, wary of her back. The door crack is visible. Jon’s bed is rumpled, and empty. 

Sansa sits up immediately, looking for her chair. Instead, she finds her crutches leaning against the side table. His safer, approved alternative. She rolls her eyes, but puts them to use. After using the bathroom, she decides to check out the commotion.

It’s coming from outside. Rather than go back to her room and grab a coat, she rifles through Jon’s suitcase, and pulls out a pair of flannel pajama pants, double knotting them at the waist, and one of his faded sweatshirts. The cold that greets her when she opens the kitchen door stings a little less fiercely. She’s still barefoot. 

Jon is outside, with no coat on, like a lunatic. Just a black ribbed tank and a pair of bottoms that look a lot like the ones she wears now. He’s soaked in sweat, continuously bringing an ax down against a log of wood. Cords of muscle flex under his skin when he moves, as if they’re sentient. Between every chop, he pushes his hair out of her face with gloved hands. 

Distractedly, Sansa allows the door to slam. The sound is louder than her heart in her ears and the staccato like pulse between her thighs and it earns his attention. 

Jon leans against the axe, brows raised. “Nice clothes.”

“I...I was cold.” She stammers lamely.

“At least you’re wearing pants.” His tone is equal parts chiding and amused. He wipes his forehead with the back of his arm. “Did I disturb you?”

“No.” It’s not exactly a lie. Nothing about the sight of him, dripping and heavy, is disturbing her. Except maybe her thoughts. They’re really bad thoughts. The kind she wouldn’t be comfortable even referring to on a Sunday.

“I was just making sure we have enough.” Jon gestures to the plentiful pile he had made so far, but stops suddenly with a wince. He touches his shoulder. “Fuck.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Think I pulled something.”

It’s Sansa’s turn to chide him. “You’re getting old.” She beckons him. “Come inside. Let’s get some ice on it.”

“Let me get these inside first.”

She waits for him on his bed, a bag of frozen peas in hand. The sheets smell like him, and it makes her feel jittery. Jon doesn’t notice. He’s too busy setting all the wood by the fire. 

“Sit.” She says. “Don’t make me chase you around.”

It’s a threat that he grimaces at. He sits beside her. 

His skin is warm in her hands. Tacky with sweat. Sansa swallows thickly, tugging at the hem of his shirt. It is a concentrated effort to sound casual. “Take this off.”

He hesitates. Just for a moment. Ultimately the shirt ends up on the ground, and his bare back is in her hands. She feels around, applying tentative pressure. “Tell me where it hurts.”

Jon says nothing, until she hits a spot right underneath his right shoulder blade. His breath comes out sharply. A groan bubbles up from his throat.

“This is where it hurts? Right here?” 

“No.” A tumble of words comes out of his mouth. “Yes. It hurts but...it feels—it’s better. When you do that.”

Sansa does it again. With both hands, one on his shoulder and one underneath it. She feels dangerously lightheaded. “Does that feel good?” 

“Mm.” He says under his breath, and she thinks that might mean yes. She wants his praise. Needs it like she needs air to breathe. She presses down a little harder, hips rocking imperceptibly against the dull edge of the bed. She’s practically begging him.

“Like that?”

“Right there.” The low confirmation is liquid fire in her belly. “Like that.”

His voice is low and raspy and his breathing is a little heavy and Sansa can’t help but wonder if this is what he would sound like above her, in between her thighs. Or even behind her. However he wanted to take her—she’d let him gladly. 

“That’s good.” Her mouth is very close to his ear. She’s thinking about nipping it. “That’s—”

A phone rings. 

Jon’s, on the bed a little ways away from them. She wants to beg him not to answer. Clinging to his shoulders, she nearly does as much. She can make out the caller ID. Val. He declines it, once again.

Sansa is suddenly aware of just how heavy their breathing is. He had an excuse. Exhaustion. But she knows he feels it too.

“I’m gonna shower.” He clears his throat. “Is that okay?”

Her room has the only shower. She nods weakly.

“Grand.” He mutters, and leaves without meeting her eyes once. His knuckles are white. He disappears into the room. She lowers herself onto the bed, chest rising and falling. Her nose is filled with the scent of him.

Her hand slips under the band of her pants. _His_ pants. She’s slippery slick with want. She allows herself to think about his warm skin under her hands, the softness of his mouth, the vibration of his groan through his back. She makes herself come twice. She allows herself to say his name.

It’s still not enough.

* * *

After Jon finishes up in the shower, Sansa gets ready for her appointment. Then, he drives her into town. Volantis Physical Therapy Clinic is downright glamorous compared to the rest of Castle Black. The building is new and shiny, like a diamond in a pile of coal. The waiting room has that plasticky smell that lets her know everything is brand new. From the chairs to the computer monitors and the gym facilities. 

“It’s very nice in here.” She observes.

“Melisandre has never had a problem with funding.” He’s typing something on his phone. “Bastards flock to her.”

“So she’s good?”

“She’s the best.” Jon answers without hesitation. “We wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

A door closes in the hallway. A woman emerges. She’s pretty in a way that makes Sansa uncomfortable. Her eyes are too dark. Her hair is too red. Her clothes are too— _fitted._ And her smile, close lipped and serene, doesn’t really feel like a smile at all. Jon stands up. They greet each other.

“Mel.”

  
“Jon.” She extends a hand out to Sansa next. “You must be my new patient.”

Sansa takes her hand. “That’s me.”

“Dr. Melisandre Asshai. I’ve heard very much about you.”

“Likewise.”

Mel. Mel is a nickname. They’re on nickname basis. She tries to ignore that, but bile is filling her throat. She doesn’t like it one bit.

“Thank you for this.” Jon says earnestly. “Really.”

Dr. Asshai’s awful red mouth quirks up, “It’s no trouble. I know you’ll make it up to me.”

He just shakes his head at that and Dr. Asshai laughs and Sansa feels like she’s at the butt of the biggest joke in the world. 

“Shall we get started?” Dr. Asshai beckons her down the hall. 

Jon turns to her. “Do you need me to come in with you?”

Sansa doesn’t meet his eyes. “I’ll be fine.”

She doesn’t wait for his response before she starts down the hallway with her crutches. Dr. Asshai leads her to an office. The biggest one. She pulls a chair out for her. Sansa doesn’t waste any time sitting down. Hopping around has made her breath labored.

“Jon tells me you’re a family friend.” Dr. Asshai smiles from across the desk. 

“His cousin is married to my uncle.” She doesn’t know why she feels the need to justify her affiliation with him. “How did you two meet?”

Blood red nails drum against the desk. “A conference.”

A conference. Perfectly vague. It could have taken place at a hospital. Or a hotel. Or a car. Sansa doesn’t want to picture it, but it’s all she can picture. Her mouth on his mouth. Her hair in his hands.

Her hair is red.

“Tell me about your accident.” Dr. Asshai leans forward.

“Uh—I broke my leg and a few ribs. I dislocated my shoulder, and I had surgery on my spine. Which is why I’m here.” 

“I know about your injuries already. Tell me about your accident.”

Sansa blinks.

“I was driving—and I lost control of the wheel on an icy road—”

“What made you lose control?” Melisandre interrupts.

She doesn’t know how to answer that.

One minute, she was on the road, and she was driving. And then she wasn’t. She doesn’t remember. It all felt like a dream. The wheel turning. Her car swerving. Up until she was actually dying.

“I was tired.” Sansa looks down at her hands.

Dr. Asshai hums, and she can’t tell if it’s disbelieving or just neutral. “Jon says you got very lucky.”

“I guess I did.” 

She cocks her head. The movement is almost predatory. “You don’t believe that?” 

_I don’t know what to believe._

“I’m very lucky.” She says at last.

Dr. Asshai looks at her for a very long time. No smiles this time. Just a look of measuring. As if she’s sizing her up. Or really seeing her for the first time. 

“Well. Let’s get you moving, and see what you can do, then we’ll go from there.”

* * *

Sansa leaves the gym facilities an hour later, slightly sore. Jon is in the waiting room where she left him. He stands up at her presence. “How was it?”

“Fine.” She doesn’t look at him.

Ha helps her into the car. She’s still fumbling with her seat belt when he starts talking again. “What did she say?”

_That I’m a family friend. That you guys met at a conference._

“Did you sleep with her?” She blurts.

They’re at a redlight. If they weren’t, Sansa thinks he would have stomped on the brake. “What?”

Now, she looks at him. She looks at him even though she can’t think of anything she’d like to do less. “You heard me.”

Jon doesn’t say anything, but he does avert his eyes, focusing intensely on the road. “What does that have to do with anything?”

His tone is measured. Placid. Level. His surgeon voice. His liar voice.

Her stomach tightens. “I guess that’s my answer.”

He clenches his jaw.

“Melisandre is good at what she does—the best. My former physical relationship with her was a long time ago. And it has nothing to do with why I picked her.”

Physical. The word swirls around her head so fast it dizzies her. She’s thinking about his mouth on her mouth again. His hand in her hair. Her red hair. Their bodies pressed up close. 

“But that’s why she chose to help me, isn’t it?”

Jon doesn’t answer. 

“Wow.” She laughs, but it sounds wrong. It feels wrong. Acerbic. “You must have really rocked her world, huh?”

His knuckles are white against the steering wheel. “Stop.”

She does as she’s told. Like she always does. They don’t speak for the rest of the ride. Not until they’re back home, and she tries to open the door. Jon stops her just by speaking. That’s the kind of power he has over her.

“I’m doing this for you. All for you.” His voice is barely above a whisper. “For you to get better. She’s gonna help you. Why does it matter…..how I met her?”

_Because._

_Because I am yours. Because I belong to you in every sense of the word. Because you have me and I don’t have you, and it seems like you enjoy reminding me of that._

Her eyes burn with tears. “It doesn’t.”

  
  


* * *

When they still lived together in London, Willas Tyrell asked her out. Willas worked underneath Jon at the hospital as a trainee surgeon. He always said hi to her when she came by to have lunch with Jon in the cafeteria. She thought he was handsome, but Jon didn’t like him very much.

“He’s too old.” He said bluntly, one night. Sansa was getting ready for their fourth date. 

Willas was 26, only five years older than she was. “He’s younger than you.”

Jon’s eyes narrowed. “Is that his only redeeming quality?”

She considered her long sleeved, dark blue dress in the mirror before she considered his words. “He’s funny. He’s kind. He knows a lot about horses.”

“Of course he knows a lot about horses, he’s a trust fund brat.”

“So are you.”

Jon scowled at that. “If you want to come so bad, then I’ll take you.”

Willas was taking her to the Valentine’s Day mixer the hospital staff was having at the pub nearby. Jon previously wasn’t going, as he hated parties, but it seemed he was going now.

“You didn’t invite me. Willas did.”

“I didn’t know you wanted to go.”

“What I _want_ is to not be late. So can we do this whole lecture thing another time? Preferably later? I’ll see you there.”

“Right. Wouldn’t want to keep Willas waiting.” Jon said under his breath. Sansa pretended not to hear him. She didn’t know what his problem was and she didn’t want to think about it.

The mixer was a fantastic time. They drank, and they danced. Willas spun her around until she couldn’t stop giggling. He beat her at darts, and put a pair of heart eyes antennae on her head. He introduced her to his coworkers. He taught her how to play pool, even though it seemed he didn’t know how to play much himself. They both kept dissolving into laughter as he tried and failed to knock multicolored balls into the table pockets.

“Not quite horseback riding, is it Tyrell?”

They both turned. Jon was watching them, scotch in hand. He looked deceptively nonchalant. 

Willas grinned good naturedly at him. “Not quite.”

Willas was too nice to understand that Jon was making fun of him. Sansa glared. “Hush. You’re interrupting. He’s teaching me.”

“Not very well.” Jon retorted. 

“You can do better?”

“Get over here, and I’ll show you.”

She didn’t want to, but she had to. It was like she was being compelled to do so. One minute, she was beside Willas, and the next, she was in front of Jon. He turned her, his hands splayed on her hips, hot through her dress. Then he took the stick from her.

“The trick is to keep your eye on the ball.” His words were in her ear, his breath whistled hot against her neck. “Closing an eye helps sometimes….”

Sansa wasn’t listening. She was too distracted by his closeness. His hips behind her hips. His chest pressed against her back as they bent together. She nearly forgot Willas was there entirely. 

“You know how to play pool.” Jon said, voice soft and accusing.

She hit the ball into the left corner pocket on the first try, like she knew she could in the first place. She cleared her throat. “I guess you’re a really good teacher.”

He hummed, and she repressed the urge to shiver. “Playing the damsel for him, are you? It’s cute.”

He walked away, and Willas watched after him with a frown. But Sansa kissed him, and he was sufficiently distracted. That was when they left, and went to Willas’ flat. 

She got home at 2 in the morning. Her stockings were rumpled. Her mascara was smudged. Her hair was a mess. She was achingly aware of how unsatisfied she still was and the sight of Jon on the couch waiting for her only worsened her mood.

“I don’t like him.” He said. 

“Yeah, I got that.” She snapped, throwing her purse down on the kitchen table. Before she could march to her room, he caught her by the elbow. His eyes were dark and hard and hot. 

“Are you gonna stop going out with him?”

“Are you gonna make me?”

Jon said nothing.

Make me, she wanted to tell him. Take me. Take me right now. She wanted to beg him. She wanted to _cry_ because she couldn’t recall ever wanting anyone this bad before. She was practically dizzy with it.

“You have class tomorrow.” She wasn’t sure if she imagined the way his eyes flickered to her lips, and then away. “You shouldn’t have been out so late. Get to bed.”

She slammed the door behind her and took off all her clothes. Her hand snuck between her legs. She pretended this was what he meant when he told her to go to bed.

* * *

The next few days are spent in silence. Sansa stays in her room. Jon stays on his couch. They only mingle together during meals, and when it’s time for him to take her to physical therapy. She goes two more times that week. 

The first time he talks to her again is after the third one. She’s particularly sore and achy and bitter. Dr. Asshai had bid her, with a condescending smile, to call her Mel. Sansa is stewing in the passenger seat, thinking about ripping those pretty strands of artificial red right out of her head. Jon is cutting a side glance towards her. He does this quite often. Sansa wishes he would stop.

“Locals are saying it’s gonna get really bad.” 

He’s talking about the snow. It’s already relentless. A steady sprinkling had begun early this morning and hadn’t stopped. There’s four inches of snow covering everything in sight.

“I’m gonna go back into town after I drop you off.” Jon continues. “Stock up just in case the roads close. Do you need anything?”

She stares ahead. 

He sighs tiredly. “Not even a syllable, Sansa?”

She debates that, and decides she can’t deny him everything. “No.”

“Grand.” He mutters darkly, and they don’t talk anymore.

Not until he comes home later that night. It’s after dinner. She’s already tucked in her bed, reading a trashy regency novel she found on the book shelf. 

“I know you said you didn’t want anything.” Jon is lingering outside of her door, hesitant. “But I still got you this.”

Sansa watches over the top of her book warily as he places a plastic bag on her bed. Once he realizes she’s not gonna open it, he sighs, and does the honors himself.

“You don’t have any of your stuff up here.” He hedges. “And I know you get out of sorts when you can’t express yourself, so…”

He pulls out several tubes, multi colored. Paint. A box of brand new brushes. A pad of wood pulp paper. She stares. 

“It’s watercolor.” Jon pauses. “I don’t know if you still like it, but—”

_I do,_ she wants to say, but she says nothing at all. Even with her heart hurting and her eyes burning.

“Right.” He says, more to himself than her. His face is blank, and closed off.

He leaves, and she lets him.

  
  


* * *

It’s worse than the roads being closed. They’re hit by a full blown nor’easter. The snow begins and it doesn’t stop. By Friday afternoon, the world is blanketed with white, a regional wide alert has been spread to everyone’s phone—

And her mother is freaking out.

“I’m supposed to come see you,” Catelyn says worriedly. “I can’t just not see you.”

“You’re supposed to stay alive. We don’t need you in the hospital too.” Although the lump in her throat is steadily dissolving at the thought of not seeing her family. “I’ll be fine, Mom.”

“You’re right.” She sounds as if she’s trying to convince herself. “Jon is taking care of you. He’ll keep you safe until next weekend.”

More than seven days away. It feels like an eternity, but Sansa forces cheer into her voice. “Yes. It will.” 

Later that night, she has a nightmare. The same nightmare. She wakes up in a shaky, cold sweat. She doesn’t scream. She’s feeling too utterly hopeless to scream. She sits there awhile, before she decides to move. 

Sansa stumbles out of bed as best as she can in her crutches. She runs herself a bath so hot the water stings her skin pink when she gets in. She folds her casted leg over the lip of the tub, and waits for the pain to pass. She submerges her head underneath the water. She can hear her heartbeat in her ears. She’s in a different world, one without nightmares and survivor’s guilt. She’s so busy trying not to breathe, she doesn’t have to think. She’s disappearing. She’ll come back when she breathes again, but right now—she doesn’t want to. Her lungs are burning. Her throat is tightening. 

Cold air breaks over her skin as air suddenly fills her lungs. She takes a reflexive, gulping breath. There’s pressure on her upper arms. Her eyes fly open. 

“What are you doing?” Jon is shaking her, voice raised. “Huh?”

Sansa coughs, sputtering water out of her mouth. He wipes her chin, holding onto her fast. “I’ve been calling your name this entire time!”

“I didn’t hear. I was—”

“You were too busy trying to drown yourself!”

“I wasn’t—”

“Fuck.” Jon turns around, rubbing at his face. “You told me. You _promised—_ ”

“I just wanted some quiet.” It sounds weak and feeble in her own ears, and she isn’t sure if it’s true. 

“You don’t get to do this. You don’t. I _need_ you. You don’t get to take that away from me. Not now. Not ever.” 

Guilt is trying to pull her back under. Her eyes water. “What about me? I needed you, and you left me.”

“You left me.” He says quietly.

“You didn’t give me a choice!” She chokes out. “And you didn’t even try to stop me, you didn’t—”

_“I don’t know what you want from me!”_

He shouts the words so loudly she flinches and his voice cracks at the end.

“I’m not that guy who will run through an airport for you, and I’m not that guy who you can take to meet your friends, and I’m not—I am not those things. I cannot be those things. Not for you.”

Sansa hates him and she loves him all at the same time.

“Why?”

“You know why.”

_You’re too young. I’m too old. You’re too much. I’m not enough._

“I mean why are you here?” She cuts him off. “Why are you here? If you can’t be those things, then why don’t you just leave?”

“Because you need me. Because I’m supposed to be helping you get—”

“I don’t need you.” The lie is metallic in her mouth. “Go ahead and leave. See if I care.”

He’s hurt, just for a second. She sees it on his face. “No.”

“Go back to London. Go back to your wife, and your life, just once and for all—get out of mine.”

Jon leans forward. She splashes him with her bad arm, and it stings. He still doesn’t move. His hands cup her face. Her eyes are burning from the tears and from the pain. 

“I need you. And I need you to be okay. That’s why I’m here.”

Tears slip silently down her cheek. He catches each one with the pad of his thumb, wiping it away. Their foreheads are pressed together. That is when she kisses him. With his mouth on hers, she feels like she can breathe again. He hesitates for a second, but then he’s kissing her back and just for a moment, everything in the world feels so right. They break away for breath only to kiss again. Her hand finds the back of his neck, pulling him closer. His palm finds her bare shoulder, and her blood sings. But he hesitates.

“You can touch me.” She says against his mouth. “Please touch me.”

Something low and raw rips from his throat, as his hand moves lower. His rough palm rasps against her nipple. A whisper of a gasp escapes her throat. His thumb draws a slow, tentative circle, and her head falls back. He kisses the corner of her mouth, then her throat, as he plays with her. Her breathing skyrockets.

His hand dips lower, and lower, until it’s fully submerged underneath the water and he’s close to where she needs him most, between her thighs. But that’s where he stops. His hand is on her leg. His breathing is ragged against the tops of her breasts. Sansa can’t breathe. She begs, “Please.”

He spreads her open, stroking into her heat. The heel of his palm grinds against her cunt. She wants to arch her back. A sharp pain stops her—her injury. She whimpers.

“Don’t move.” Jon commands her, mouth so close to hers. She nods, eager to give him anything he wants. Her eyes are watering as she feels his thumb circle her. Wordless and mindless sounds are escaping from her mouth. Something inside of her is climbing up and up. 

“I need…” Another whine leaves her mouth. Desire is ravenous in her chest.

“Go on.” His encouragement is patient, and soothing, and it’s just enough to push her over the edge, to send her flailing into bliss, orgasm rolling through her, annihilating every other emotion in a 10 mile radius so that there’s nothing left. So that she’s just this empty, shallow husk of the person she used to be.

It’s more than tears falling down her cheeks. Something inside of her breaks, and she’s crying horrible, body wracking sobs. 

_“Mo chridhe,”_ he says bemusedly, hand on her thigh, and Sansa shuts her eyes. She can’t let him see her like this. Or she can’t see him see her like this.

His face turns into her hair as he gathers her in his arms, holding her close, and she cries until there isn’t a tear left in her.

“I’ve got you.” He says.

  
  


* * *

Sansa wakes up in the dark. The moon is visible through the thin cotton of the curtains. The window is cracked. Smoke filters out, and a silhouette is stenciled in the dark. She recognizes the pattern of his breathing before his face.

“Jon?”

His gait stills, as he tips his head back. The moonlight falls fully on his face. He’s sitting in the window seat. The dark circles under his eyes make it clear he hasn’t slept. “Go back to bed.”

She limps out of bed on her one good leg, eyes still bleary. He must have dressed her when she got out of the bath—one of his thermals hangs to her thighs. No underwear.

“It’s cold over here.” He says in admonishment, yet his hands are coming up to help her make her way towards him easier. His hands are warm.

The breeze from the window is indeed brisk, but it doesn’t deter him. She sits on his leg. Her voice is small. 

“So keep me warm.”

Jon stubs his cigarette out in his ashtray with a sigh. But his arms come up around her without any further complaint. His face tips up towards hers. He looks at her in this way that makes her feel like she’s been stripped to the bone. She is uncomfortably bare and weak. But his sigh washes against her chest, shaky and helpless, and she knows instantly that he feels the same. 

Sansa whispers, “Come to bed.” 

“Just give me a moment.” His forehead falls against her breastbone. 

She combs his fingers through his hair, waiting. The grays at his temples are more prominent tonight. She wonders if that’s because of her. 

“We’re gonna have to talk about it. At some point.”

The crash. She tries not to flinch. Instead, she brings him closer. She will hold him before she loses him entirely, even if it is just once.

“Okay.”

Jon pulls away, just a little, to meet her eyes.

“Don’t go where I can’t follow you.” His voice is thick. “I’ll never ask anything of you again—so long as you give me that.”

Sansa has no choice but to nod, even if she’s not sure that this is a promise she can keep. She can’t meet his eyes. His arms tighten around her waist, as if she could disappear any moment. She feels like she’s about to cry, and she doesn’t want him to see her like that again, so she leans into his neck. He is rubbing circles into her back, and she’s not sure who he’s trying to reassure more.

The hollow of his neck is warm, and it smells like everything good in the world—snow, and the forest, and smoke. The cold chain of his necklace nips at her cheek. She traces it with her finger, and feels him stiffen. His hand touches her elbow. She looks up at him.

“Please don’t.” He says under his breath.

Normally, that would make her pause. Normally, she’d do anything he asked of her. But there’s something strange about the way he can’t meet her eyes right now, and familiar about the object underneath his shirt. It’s shaped like a circle, and it’s hard. She pulls on the chain, expecting a charm—but that’s not what she finds at all. Her breath catches.

The ring looked just like it had when she last saw it, on her dresser after she got out of the shower a lifetime ago. Sterling silver, with a heart in the middle. Her princess ring. It was a gift from her father. She had left London in such a hurry, she forgot it in the chaos, and thought it lost forever. 

“You kept it.” Hanging right above his heart. A little piece of her. 

Jon doesn’t say a word. He tries to turn away, but she holds him there, hands cupping his face.   
  


She’s crying again. She doesn’t want to be crying again, but she is. “Why?”

He shakes his head.

“Tell me why.” 

“Why does it matter?”

“You know why.”

It does, because two years ago, he told her that it’d pass. Two years ago, he told her that she’d forget about him and fall in love again and now here they are. After she heard he married Val she thought maybe he was right. But now….now he’s here, and so is she, and—

Sansa can feel his eyelashes against her cheeks and his breath against her mouth and the words leaving his lips, coming home to her.

“I kept it because I love you.” He says. “Because you’re one of the only people in this world I love.”

Her voice is still hoarse and there’s tears on her cheeks, but she isn’t crying anymore. She’s sad, but it’s a different kind of sad. A relieved, weightless kind. She urges him, “Show me.”

Jon kisses her again, with his arms wrapped around her body, clinging to her like she’s his home. That is all she wants to be. She wants to hollow and sand her bones for him. She wants to give everything to him, because it’s always belonged to him. Except this time, he is accepting her.

“I don’t wanna hurt you.” He says against her mouth. His hands are cradling her lower back protectively.

_I want you to,_ Sansa thinks. She rocks her hips against his thigh and the friction of his jeans is overwhelming. She tugs at his collar. “You won’t.”

He carries her to bed with his hand under her bottom and his arm around her waist. She feels like a clinging monkey. But then he lays her down so gingerly, she feels like a treasure. She lifts up the hem of his sweater, and he shucks it off, tossing it to the side. He is leaning over her now. The necklace dangles in her face, but all she can look at his eyes and all she can feel under her hands is his skin. 

“We have to be careful.”

Sansa runs her hands over his back. “I’m on the pill.”

“Oh. That’s good to know.” His brow furrows. “But I was talking about your injuries.”

“Oh.” 

“I wasn’t sure if you were—I mean….you want to?”

She kisses him again, unzipping his jeans, and that is her answer. He nods, taking them off, and gingerly removes her shirt. Goosebumps raise all over her arms. She feels cold and exposed, but she finds she likes it very much.

Jon guides her body with gentle hands on her hips, turning her so she’s on her stomach and her back is flat, without any tension. Her cheek is pressed against the pillow.

“How does this feel?” He brushes her hair off her neck, so he can talk to her quietly. “Is it okay?”

The feel of him behind her is intoxicating. His chest against her back. His chin rasping against the slope of her throat. His hand on her hip. His cock pressing hard against her. Sansa is overwhelmed with him. It’s already too much. Anything is okay as long as he stays this close to her forever. 

She answers, “However you want.”

He makes a sound in her ear that she feels in her toes. His hand travels from her hip to between her legs. She hears her voice cry out, as if she isn’t in control of her own body. She is no longer a person. Just something that belongs to him. 

When he leans into her, his mouth is on her neck. He is now inside her, and Sansa forgets how to breathe. There’s a slight pinch, a resistance, but his lips touch the shell of her ear and his arm comes up around her front, holding her close and she forgets it altogether.

“I can stop.” Jon tells her.

“More.” She begs him.

The discomfort disappears, and it starts to feel so good, that she can’t see clearly. She wants to hold onto him but all she can do is grip the pillow. She feels like she is deep inside of herself, a mere passenger in the vehicle that is her body. An observer. She doesn’t have to worry about anything or think about anything—all she has to do is feel. She feels raw, desperate cries leaving her throat and she feels wet tracks on her cheeks and she feels him deep inside her stomach and she feels his breath washing hot and uneven over the back of her neck, and she hears his voice, over and over again. _Mo chridhe,_ he keeps saying, as his hand leaves her breast for between her legs once more and she chokes on her pleasure, on her love for him. 

That is how she comes, on a tidal wave of emotion, tightening around him. She’s distantly, vaguely aware of his hips stuttering and him following her. His face is pressed against her shoulder blade. Their skin sticks together from sweat. Sansa sinks deeper into the mattress. She feels curiously heavy and weightless at the same time. Jon combs his fingers through her hair, but he doesn’t say anything, and she is glad for it.

She’s afraid words will ruin everything.

* * *

They don’t leave bed for a very long time.

This is unusual for Jon. By nature, he is a restless person. Still, he stays by her side, as she drifts in and out of sleep. As the sky begins to lighten outside. 

“You’re still here.” Sansa points out around noon. 

He’s not on his phone. He’s simply lying beside her. His hand is under the covers, splayed over the base of her back. As if he’s protecting her injury. “Where else would I be?”

Leaving. Not physically, but mentally. Retreating so far within himself that she can’t reach him. But he is still with her now, so she tries not to dwell on it. She presses her cheek into his shoulder.

Instead, Sansa says, “I think I’ll paint today.”

“Alright.” He says.

And that’s what she does. Jon sets up her easel and her paints and he sits on the couch, checking his email, while she pretends to paint a vase of flowers when really, she’s painting his hands. Strong. Graceful. Life saving hands. Hands that touched her. 

“You tricked me.” He says, when she shows him. They are sitting on the sofa, watching the paint dry.

“People are looking at your hands in the operating room all of the time.” Sansa points out. “I just did the same thing.

“It’s not the same. If you were in the OR with me, I wouldn’t be able to concentrate. 

She leans up against him, voice teasing. “Am I too distracting?”

He laughs. “Not in the way you’re thinking of.”

“Then in what way?”

“I care too much about how you see me. If someone died on the table with you watching, I’d rather go out and face the family than see you after.”

Sansa considers this, sandwiching his hand between hers. “Losing a patient wouldn’t emasculate you in my eyes, you know.”

“It’s not about being manly.” He looks at her. “I just don’t want you to be disappointed in me.” 

She feels bad for her remark, so she straddles his knee, and wraps her arms around his neck. 

“I wish you’d be more careful.” Jon chastises, as his hands find her hips, skimming her sides. 

Sansa ignores it. She leans in close to him, and kisses his forehead, and cheeks, and nose. “I’m always proud of you.”

She watches his ears turn red as he averts his eyes, but she just kisses him. He kisses her back, holding her close. She thinks: _I will never get tired of this._

Jon’s phone rings on the coffee table. He checks the caller ID and Sansa holds her breath. It’s probably Val. Will he answer this time?

He does, but then he hands the phone to her. “It’s for you.”

Tentatively, she takes it. But she sees from the screen that it’s just Benjen. She breathes a sigh of relief. “Hey.”

“There she is!” Arianne says through the phone. 

Just the sound of her voice makes Sansa feel lighter. She can barely get a word in through Benjen and Arianne talking over each other, inquiring about the storm and her well being. She assures them that she’s fine repeatedly until they believe it. 

“Is Jon torturing you?” Arianne demands. 

Jon is in the kitchen now, making her tea. He doesn’t even know that his name has been mentioned.

“Yes, he is.” Sansa holds the phone between her ear and shoulder. “I told you to bring me back to London with you, so it’s all your fault.”

Benjen laughs, while Arianne just snorts. 

“Jon left London quite the war zone and Rhaegar is still picking up the pieces from Val’s tantrum—”

“You’re not missing anything.” Benjen cuts her off. “It’s better for you there, is all we’re saying. But we do miss you very much.”

His voice is a forced kind of cheerful but she's still stuck on Arianne’s words that he’s so obviously trying to gloss over. “What tantrum? What happened?”

Benjen is silent while Arianne sighs long and hard. “Of course he didn’t tell you.”

Jon is still in the kitchen, out of sight. Dread snakes through her stomach. She can’t bring herself to let go of the breath she’s holding. “Tell me what?”

* * *

Sansa waits until he comes back into the room. She does not call his name. She’s scared of what she will do when she does. But when he comes back in the room, she has no choice. The words come out immediately, like vomit. 

“You left her.”

Jon is standing in front of her. He’s holding her tea. His face is impassive. He says nothing. 

She says it again, a little stronger this time. “You left your wife.”

“Sansa.” He knows that look. He’s about to make her stop. She can’t.

Her entire body feels like it’s shaking. It probably is. “Why?”

Jon steps forward. “You’re getting yourself worked up—”

“Stop talking to me like I’m one of your damn patients!” She shouts it so loud her throat feels raw. “Tell me the truth! For once, tell me—”

“You want me to tell you the truth?” He’s yelling at her back. She can’t help but flinch. “When I heard you got hurt, my whole world stopped! I couldn’t _breathe._ By the time I was able to get a flight, they said you were stable. But—I had to see for myself. I had to know…” His jaw flexes. “I was packing. I was leaving. Val got angry. She said—to choose between her or you. To stay, or leave.”

And he left.

And now he’s with her. He’s ignoring his wife’s calls. But he’s still wearing his ring. He has been this whole time.

“You didn’t tell me.” 

“You just got out of surgery. You had bigger things to worry about—”

“But what about when we left the hospital? When we were in the car for four hours? When we got here? We’ve been here for a week and you haven’t said anything at all.”

And Jon says nothing now. 

“You regret it, don’t you?” She hates how small her voice sounds. “You’re gonna go back to her. That’s why you didn’t tell me. It’s not permanent.”

His eyes widen. “No.That’s not—that’s not why. I swear it.”

Tears are welling up in her eyes. She tries to get up, but she can’t go anywhere with her casted leg. Jon prevents her from doing so, kneeling in front of her. 

“Listen to me.” His hands cup her cheeks. “Please.”

Sansa is as incapable of moving as she is of denying him. But she still doesn’t look at him. She won’t give him that.

“I was supposed to be done with love a long time ago. But then I met you. And you made me love you. So much.” His voice catches. “That’s why I married Val. Because I’m a coward. I knew you’d be the last person I’d ever love.”

The word sends shocks up her spine every time he says them. She decides to look at him. His eyes are watery, too. 

“But you...you’re far from done. You have time and—I’m not taking that time away from you. I’m not burdening you.”

She actually laughs. It’s humorless and bleak but it’s the only thing she is capable of. “You still don’t get it.”

His brow wrinkles in a silent question, and she reaches over to smooth it out.

“How much I love you.” 

His lips part, as if to speak, but Sansa decides it’s her turn. She leans her forehead against his, and feels his body relax. 

“You love me.” Her voice cracks with relief. “And I love you the same. Why can’t that just be it? Why can’t that be all that matters?”

Jon breathes a low, shallow breath. 

“You’re scared.” She takes his hand and presses it to her chest, where her heart is going like a jackhammer. “We can be scared together.”

His other hand is rough against her cheek as she presses his palm to lips. He mutters, “Together.”

Sansa takes his ring finger into her mouth, lips wrapping around the cold metal, until it’s been removed. She takes it, and drops it on the floor. 

“You’re mine, now.” She whispers.

She kisses him so softly their lips just barely brush. And then he pulls her closer, and kisses her again, longer, but still gentler. He says, “Okay.”

He takes her to bed again. It’s different this time. He lays her down and has his head between her thighs. The sun is setting, and everything is illuminated by an orange haze. His hand is on her breast again, over her heart. He makes her come like that, and again, before she straddles his hips with her own. His lips are on her neck. His chin rasps against her shoulder and his breath is hot against her neck, and she knows she’s never known a closeness like this with anyone else, and she never will.

“I’m gonna want to do that again, later.” She mutters into his neck sleepily, and Jon just laughs. 

“Again?”

“And again. And again, The rest of my life, really.”

“The rest of your life?” He echoes again, a little quieter.

Sansa brushes the shell of his ear with her nose, suddenly unsure. “As long as you’ll have me, at least.”

His fingers lace through hers as he pulls her a little closer.

He says, “I think I’ll have you for a bit longer than that.”

  
  
  



End file.
